Anchorage School District and Milwaukee Public Schools Expand Use of MY Access! Online Writing Program

Published: October 29, 2009

Vantage Learning's MY Access! included in curriculum for thousands of Anchorage and Milwaukee students to improve overall literacy and writing skills

EWING, N.J.-October 29, 2009-Eleven thousand and 4,000 additional students respectively in the Milwaukee Public Schools and Anchorage School District will soon be using a highly effective online learning program to advance their writing skills. The two districts have increased the number of students who will be using Vantage Learning's MY Access! for the 2009/2010 school year. Teachers in both districts decided this expansion was warranted after seeing the positive feedback from students currently using the program, as well as the remarkable improvement in their writing proficiency.

Currently in Milwaukee, 30,000 students in grades 4-8 are using MY Access!, and with this expansion, the total number will reach 41,000. The students seeing the additional rollout of MY Access! are in 11th and 12th grade, and will have the opportunity to firmly improve their writing before graduating and post-graduation education.

"Students thrive with feedback. Teachers in a classroom of 25 or 30 kids simply are not able to get to everyone, certainly at the same rate of the program. MY Access! takes over as a copilot and allows students to get that instantaneous feedback, and as a result, you see kids constantly engaged. There's never an off switch while they're waiting for the teacher to get to them," says Patrice Ball, MilwaukeePublic School's English Language Arts Curriculum Specialist who has seen the expansion as inevitable due to the positive progress in the classroom.

In Anchorage Public Schools, district administration implemented the pilot program in its elementary, middle, and high schools at the beginning of the 2008-2009 school year with 7,000 students using MY Access!. This year, 4,000 additional students will use the program. District administrators decided to expand the number of student users after positive feedback from teachers and students throughout the district.

MY Access! instantly analyzes over 350 semantic, syntactic, and discourse characteristics, and scores students on focus and meaning, organization, content and development, language use and style, mechanics and conventions, and overall writing proficiency. The instantaneous feedback has resulted in Anchorage students drastically improving their writing.

Teachers in Milwaukee and Anchorage who have used MY Access! have found the program helps pinpoint problem areas and gives students the inspiration and motivation needed to develop their writing from simple sentences to full essays. MY Access! has become a sought-after instructional tool that students want to use. Teachers in both districts are looking forward to expanding the use of MY Access! even more this year, and seeing measurable results of overall academic achievement of students and further integration of 21st-century learning technology.

ABOUT VANTAGE LEARNING

A pioneer in providing a Software as a Service (SaaS) model to deliver solutions to educators, Vantage Learning is recognized as the leader in cost-effective, high volume, secure, scalable online assessment and instructional programs for K-12 school districts. Leveraging technology such as artificial intelligence, natural language understanding, and Web-based learning objects, Vantage provides educators with high-quality tools and resources that motivate students to learn and that create meaningful interaction between students, parents and teachers.

Acknowledged by industry leaders as the gold standard for scoring quality, consistency, reliability, and scalability of automated essay scoring using the patented IntelliMetric® engine, Vantage Learning has received accolades ranging from the prestigious CODIE Award for best instructional technology to recognition by Eduventures as one of the eight most innovative educational technology companies.